Republican gospel according to Ted Cruz
He’s a card-carrying Christian and conservative who now poses biggest threat to Trump
RINGSTED, IOWA.— Ted Cruz, Republican presidential candidate, once mused about a career as an actor. Now he performs his conservative zeal.
His stump speech is a full-body production, a monologue that combines the flourishes of the born-again church and the high school musical. There are sweeping arm gestures, pregnant pauses, a pursed-lip chortle at precisely the same moment each time. To close, he invokes Jesus — “Awaken the Body of Christ that we might pull back from this abyss” — and asks his supporters to pray.
His political colleagues see him as a grandstanding phoney. On the trail, dressed unassumingly in a zip-neck sweater and blue jeans, he can seem like the most honest man around. When he finished quoting Scripture on Friday in the Iowa farm town of Fenton (population: 279), John Brickner had tears in his eyes, his support wavering for Rick Santorum.
“I really think his evangelical attitude kind of got a grip on me,” said Brickner, a 50-something who sells home alarm systems. “I’m really not that kind of guy.”
The Iowa caucus is on Monday. Cruz, a man on the fringe of the Republican caucus in the U.S. Senate, is now the party’s best hope to thwart a Donald Trump waltz to the nom- ination. It is his professed fervour, both religious and ideological, that has won him converts around the country.
Cruz is running on a platform that is both unabashedly Christian and unabashedly conservative — far further right than the eclectic set of positions put forward by Trump. The Calgary-born senator from Texas would be the most right-wing nominee since Barry Goldwater lost in a landslide in 1964.
The opinions of his Senate peers range from moderate disdain to intense revulsion. In Iowa, the Harvard Law grad shows flashes of dorky charm. Mostly, though, he makes the case that likability doesn’t matter. What voters need, he argues, is conservative purity.
Cruz is not proposing to ban Muslims, and he is polished and polite. But while Trump has waffled on Planned Parenthood, Cruz says he would launch an investigation into the abortion provider on his very first day in office. Trump criticizes the nuclear deal with Iran; Cruz would “rip it to shreds.”
Trump is promising conventional tax cuts. Cruz is pledging to “abolish the IRS” and replace the entire income tax system with a 10-per-cent “flat tax.” Trump is silent on gayrights issues. Cruz ridiculed transgender people on Friday, saying even his 5-year-old “knows the difference between boys and girls.”
Cruz appears to have weakened during the Iowa home stretch. The party establishment widely expected to mount an all-out effort to take down Trump has instead joined Cruz’s rivals in a withering attack on his authenticity and personality. Most damaging, though, are Trump’s relentless questions about Cruz’s eligibility. The president must be a “natural born citizen.” Cruz, born to an American mother and Cuban father, only renounced his dual Canadian citizenship in 2014. On Friday, Trump called him “Canada Ted” and an “anchor baby.”
Cruz’s response: “Heh-heh.” But the Canada matter is no joke. Before Trump raised it, Cruz was leading in Iowa. In a Des Moines Register poll released Saturday, Trump led 28 per cent to Cruz’s 23 per cent.
If Cruz comes back to win, it will be because he is working harder than his opponents. Trump does a rally or two per day. Cruz, visiting all 99 Iowa counties, spoke in five rural towns on Friday, none with a population bigger than 4,000.
His first stop was the restaurant in Ringsted (official population: 422). Nobody there could remember any other candidate showing up. Because Cruz did, he made a potential supporter out of Colleen Kruse, 65, a Democrat who voted twice for Barack Obama.
“There are people out of rural areas that give a damn, too. And I feel like we’re left out from time to time. And when somebody comes to a town of 400 or less, it’s impressive. Like he really does care,” Kruse said.
She also liked that he sounded so sincere.